Our Violent Delights
by EXY.Uli
Summary: "These violent delights have violent ends, And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume." People like to laugh at the literature, but laugh all they want, there is a certain truth to those words that for SHIELD Agent "Skye" and Hydra Agent Grant Ward is all too real.
1. Doth With Her Death Bury

**Synopsis:** Au in which HYDRA was never truly eradicated post WWII, and SHIELD had known this from the beginning. Throughout the years, HYDRA continued to persist as an independent terrorist organization ruled by their twisted philosophy, and the struggle between the two agencies never ceased. Diverging from the events in TWS, HYDRA launched an external attack on The Triskelion, but the operation failed, and though Nick Fury was "lost" during the process, the damage was not extensive. Under the new leadership of Philip Coulson, SHIELD quickly regained its ground. However, it was during this attack that Shield Agent "Skye" crossed path with Hydra Agent Grant Ward…

* * *

><p>"These violent delights have violent ends<p>

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which, as they kiss, consume."

_Friar Lawrence | "Romeo & Juliet" by William Shakespeare_

* * *

><p>ll<p>

_DECEMBER 24, 2015 _

_ 16:45_  
><em> SHIELD HEADQUARTER: THE NEW TRISKELION<em>  
><em> LOCATION: 38.8972° N, 77.0642° W<em>

ll

The first snow of the year falls around the restored edifice like a blanket of frozen feathers. The evening sky is goose-down grey, trimmed at the edge by the violet twilight, and fading into the western horizon of Washington D.C.

Within Unit 103 of the medical bay, a dash of orange light steals through the seam between the shades, and brushes a golden kiss upon the wane, ashen cheek of a slumbering patient. The quietness of Christmas Eve is so pervasive that her companion, a woman well into her forties, believes for the briefest of moment that everything would be alright.

Agent Melinda May, the legendary 'Cavalry', trots quietly across the room carrying a small bouquet wrapped in clear plastic. A plain white vase sits upon the bedside table, looking quite sad with its wrinkled daisies and wilting gypsophila.

_Always the freshest daisies in her room. Always._

The girl's father had insisted, and who is she to object?

So as she had done for past fortnight, Melinda tosses the dying flowers into the bins and switches them with the fresh batch she'd picked up from the florist an hour ago.

_One last mission before the holidays, I mean, not that we_ _get holidays. Simmons is probably going to offer to pack me a sandwich again. Fitz is right, she needs to go easy on the mustard._

Her hands – deft, able hands of a senior operative – tremble upon the petals of a particular daisy flower, browning around edge and dying before its time while all its sisters still blossom.

Her mother once told her about an old Chinese tale of a sickly girl burying fallen petals and weeping over their loss. How ridiculous, she had thought back then, but now there are tears springing to her own eyes, and she cannot help it as they escape past her lashes.

Standing over the pot of daisies, May allows herself a minute to cry, where no one can see or hear her. Her shoulders does not quake, and her spine remains straight, but the tears that no one need know about rains down onto the plume. She can see now why the sharp end of a young life would justify sorrow, but while the girl in the story had cried out of self-pity, May's tears are for someone else.

Wiping her face quickly, she takes a breath to compose herself. Usually, this is the part where she takes leave, but today, she makes a commitment to stay. It's Christmas Eve; who better to keep company with a comatose than a taciturn recluse?

Gently, May perches herself on the edge of the bed, but keeps her hands balled up in her lap. She wants to reach out and hold the young woman, to touch that face in which she can still see the smiling child, or to be gazed upon by those warm angel eyes, all bright and mischievous, before they've ever laid sight on death and destruction.

But she can't, not when these extra appendages of wires, tubes and IV lines are breathing, feeding, living for the girl.

May looks down at her busted knuckles and hates herself a little more. She should've ended Ian Quain on the spot instead of letting those junior agents pry her off him. She had never liked the title "The Cavalry", never worn her alias with much pride unlike Stark, Barton (or to an extent, Romanoff). Yet, for once she wishes she had allowed herself the pleasure of letting loose the anger she kept barricaded behind a proverbial stone wall, reigned in all these years after Bahrain.

In her line of work, you learn quickly to make sacrifices and to expect loss. No truer words had been spoken than the ones Nick Fury told The Council: wars are won by soldiers, not sentiment.

But this… she had never wanted this.

The beep of the security scanner and the door sliding open alert her to the arrival of another visitor.

Philip Coulson, director of S.H.I.E.L.D, stands in the door way in his suit and tie. There are crows feet deeper than there should be wrinkling at the corner of his eyes, but the laugh lines around his lips that she always assumed a man with such infectious smiles ought to gain with age are not quite so prominent.

Still, he looks well; the years have been kind to Coulson. Some men are like fine wine…

"Agent May," Coulson greets, and adds after a pause. "Melinda."

"Hello Phil."

May doesn't bother standing up. In this room, in front of _her, _some pretenses are simply unnecessary. 'Er, his first name is Agent' – Tony Stark hadn't been entirely wrong with that off-handed joke. They _have_ let their professional life dominate their existence for far too long, but tonight…tonight they are who they should have been, not Director Coulson or Agent May, just the roles they've both neglected for the sake of duty to the greater good.

Coulson carries a small metallic box in his hands, which he begins to fiddle nervously when May's gaze inevitably lands on it.

"Audrey found it in the attic, and I thought – well…" Melinda watches Phil approaching the bed where the young agent lies, placing the music box on the opposite night stand. He opens it, and the tiny golden gears begins to turn and play a pretty little song.

Casting a narrow-eyed glare full of reproach and something bitter towards the tinkling orchestrion, May bites down on her tongue. Fond and warm recollections of the days past in contrast with the bleak present does nothing for her but invoke a sour nausea that she finds nearly impossible to bear.

"She can't hear it."

"She can," Phil insists, but he knows it's a lie.

He had found the prognosis report this morning lying on his desk. The language was detached, empirical, and completely unbashful to the truth, exactly as how protocol commands. Agent Skye's conditions are beyond the scope of human medicine and are deteriorating daily. At best, she would remain in PVS, but the trajectory of her cerebral activity offers little hope towards that end. It is the joint estimate of SHIELD physicians and the biochemistry department that within the month she would be declared brain dead.

Phil had sat for good long hour in silence with that report in front of him, hands clasped shut before his chin. He imagines that the doctors on the other end is simply doing their job, and cannot have possibly known how the contents of a standard statement can topple his whole world.

_Agent Skye. Field operative. Hacker. Former Rising Tide activist. Just Skye._

Free and undefined.

Just Skye…well, at least to everyone Level 7 and below. SHIELD keeps a thorough personnel database and conducts extensive background checks on all its employees (you never know who could be Hydra these days). Given names, nicknames, family names, skills, affiliations, education, and intimate history – everyone has a file, even legends like Bucky Barnes and Black Widow, even 'Just Skye'. Those who play the espionage game know it's hard to bury the past, especially when the past is in your veins (and sitting behind a desk on the 32nd floor signing your pay cheque).

Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz think Skye's file name is Mary Sue Poots, which is actually a silly joke that everyone takes for granted.

Ha, well… if only they know.

Shadows fall across the silence between The Cavalry and the Director, but in the darkness, May raises her gaze to meet Coulson's, and her eyes were bright like fire, like the stars that burn for millenniums. Coulson knows, that despite her cool countenance, there is a heat, _a passion, _inside Agent May which fuels her on.

Now, those eyes are on him, their depth filled with anger, hurt, and questions unanswered. Her hands tremble in her lap, and she feels foolish, naïve, like a girl once again, because of course it would be Phillip Coulson who'd be the one to make her feel ever ridiculous. Her own S.O. once said out of frustration that her partner brought the worst and best out of her.

"Were you ever planning to tell me?" She demands coarsely, voice hardened.

The man starts to object, but he knows he'd been made when she draws a microchip from her pocket. A hole had been punched through the chip, rendering it practically useless, and a thin metal chain is looped through the center.

It was found on Skye's person, which the medical team turned in with the rest of her personal effects. Coulson had entrusted the microchip to Leo Fitz, one of the brightest engineers and youngest in SHIELD, but how Melinda wound up with it…well, he supposes he really ought not to be that surprised.

Melinda May is not The Cavalry for nothing.

"A Hydra Agent," she reaches out and smoothes back a lock of hair from Skye's brow. "You knew, and you kept it from me."

Coulson looks away from the woman's accusing glare and says nothing in defense. He knows from vivid experience the heartache of being shut out by someone you care about, but even so, he finds no satisfaction from seeing Melinda on the verge of tears, trembling with rage and disbelief. The truth is he hadn't known, at least not until it was too late, and he only thought to spare his dearest friend the pain of something which is already beyond the ability of either of them to repair.

Now, he can do no more than apologize.

"I'm sorry."

Melinda shakes her head and shuts her eyes as if she's simply too tired to look on. Her shoulders sag, and she relents.

"No, Phil. This is my fault. I should've protected her."

His fists clench in his pockets so tightly they draw blood from his palm. How he wants to just make everything alright again! He can tell, by the heavy violet bruises she sports under her eyes that she hasn't slept in days. Her brows pinch together ever so often, a tick which means her head must be pounding. She always gets like that when her blood sugar is low. When was the last time she ate?

Coulson remembers his friend in such a state only once before, and he hadn't been able to help her then either. After Bahrain, it was as if she fell into the ashes and let it suck her into the quicksand, deeper and deeper into an abyss where he could not follow.

"I'm going to The Cube."

He doesn't realize she's stood up until her voice jostles him out of his thoughts. May winds her scarf around her neck and zips up her SHIELD winter jacket.

"Mel –"

"It's Christmas Eve. You have places to be. I do not." The woman stands before him with her chin jutted, her jaws clutched, and her will unrelenting. Let it never be said that Phil Coulson is one to cower from a battle. He's been to the other side, has had death swallow him whole only to spit him back out. When a man has gone through what he has gone through, there is truthfully very little in this world that he would still fear. Nevertheless, any smart man would know to be afraid when Melinda May has mutiny in her eyes and murder on her mind, and Phil is a very smart man.

"Anyway," She continues. "I need to know."

A smart man would also know to walk away. He walked away once…

"Let me come with you."

_Not so smart then after all._

May contemplates his offer with a slight tilt of her head and a frown. Coulson isn't sure if her reluctance is born out of mistrust or something else, but he doesn't like it. He had never been a fan of doubt, especially not of hers directed towards him. They may not be as close as they once were, but he'd think that at least this time she can overlook the burnt bridges.

"You are the Director. When I go in there, I won't promise I will control what I do. I can't put you in that position. There are rules –"

"_Fuck_ the rules –" His sharp outburst startles both of them. May's eyes widen fractionally, and Coulson feels silly for thinking her earlier hesitation is for any reason other than selfless consideration for _him_. This is Mel. Strong, kind, untouchable Mel.

"Phil…" Her hand reaches for him, but she catches herself in time, fingers curling in. The scabs on her knuckles, which she had busted open while punching in Ian Quain's face, stretch uncomfortably as her fist tightens. When she feels his gaze fall from her face down to her hands, May slides them into her pockets.

"You shouldn't come."

Casting a glance behind his shoulder at the young agent lying in a comatose state, Coulson replies, "HYDRA is going to pay for what they did. I'm going."

* * *

><p>ll<p>

_ SAME DAY_  
><em> 20:05<em>  
><em> SHIELD BASE: THE CUBE<em>  
><em> LOCATION: CLASSIFIED<em>

ll

_Once, they were in Pula, Croatia. He'd stolen an important piece of intel in Prague, and she'd been on his tail for two days. But he wasn't really running, and she wasn't really chasing._

_There had been tangled sheets, a bottle of 2007 Sassicaia, and the endless blue of the Adriatic Sea._

_He had emerged from the shower to see her basking in a patch of sunlight on the balcony, with a smile and the wind in her hair. Dear god, he had thought, she's just a kid. Barely a day older than twenty two._

_"Why do you have to be Hydra, Grant?" She wondered out loud, without regard of whom might hear her._

_His hands grasped the railing on either side of her, enclosing her in the circle of his arms. He rested his cheek on the crown of her hair and sighed, "Why do you have to be SHIELD?"_

_Skye doesn't make the argument that Hydra is a terrorist organization hell-bent on death and destruction to everything S.H.I.E.L.D swore to defend. The distinction would've been blurred at best. She was a hacker once, as she had told him the first time they crossed the line, and she didn't do hypocrisy._

_Chuckling, she leaned back against his chest._

_"If only you knew, Grant Ward. If only you knew."_

_He kissed her bare shoulder but didn't press about it._

_Grant Ward._

_Agent Ward._

Grant Ward.

"Grant Ward."

Mossy green eyes snap open, only to squeeze shut against the starch white fluorescent light. He lies there with the heel of his palm pressed into his eye sockets, waiting for the pain behind his eyelids to fade. Slowly, he becomes aware of the thinly matted bench underneath his back and the taste of filtered prison air on his tongue.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep, or to dream about….or to dream.

_Son, you're growing soft. _Garret would say.

"Grant Ward, you've got visitors."

He recognizes the agent standing on the other side of his invisible jail wall. 'Mockingbird', they call her – Agent 19: Barbara Morse, Level 8. Not an Avenger, but close.

She has a face that could easily be criticized as intense, hard, mean, but Grant knows that it's just the one she wants him to see. How many HYDRA agents had unwittingly talked themselves into giving up everything they know inside her interrogation room?

Too many.

Not him though. He hasn't cracked yet. What is it that the Miranda rule decrees? The right to an attorney, the right to remain silent. While an attorney might be somewhat of a stretch, Grant is completely within his ability to refuse co-operation. This is SHIELD, full of people who actually believe in goodness, so for the time being he doesn't have to worry about bodily suffering quite as much as he would if the roles had been reversed between him and Skye.

Grant holds back a shudder at the idea.

In the end, she is right.

Either SHIELD will get to him, or Hydra will get to her. In fact, the former is the very best of all the possible scenarios they played out in their minds, the latter the worst, and the most probable being they both die. So his circumstance, as hopeless as one might think, is actually incredibly comforting.

When Agent 13 and 33 shoved him to the floor and cuffed his hands still covered Skye's blood, the only thought rising above the haze that had taken over was how at least now Whitehall will never get his hands on her.

For both of them, _that _is a true mercy.

"Hydra Agent or not, I would've thought your commanding officer would've taught you a lesson in respect, or is that asking too much of your character?" Bobbi's snappish remark brings his attention to the two newcomers now standing beside her.

They must've been speaking to him. He's gotten good at tuning out these SHIELD people, but when he looks properly at the two "visitors", his interest peaks.

Ward identifies the man immediately: Director Coulson, Nick Fury's successor. Every Hydra agent alive knows that face. But the Asian woman…there is something familiar about her he can't discern.

Slowly, Wards rises to his feet and walks towards the thin veil of interlaced lazer grid security barrier that keeps him imprisoned in this cell. Up close, he sees that the woman is quite a few years his senior, beautiful and fierce in a way he recognizes. His gaze lands on the lanyard around her neck and follows it down her front, where he finds her ID.

Agent Melinda May.

Administrator/Specialist

F BRN 5-06

_Good Lord._

The words are out of his mouth before he can stop himself, the first and only thing he has allowed himself to say since he was brought in. The look on Bobbi's face is nothing short of dumbfounded, but May's blank canvas of an expression doesn't flicker.

"You're The Cavalry."

She stares at him, and no one else attempts to interrupt her cold contemplation. Funnily, Ward gets the impression that bad things happen to people who call her that. (Maybe he overreached when he assumed SHIELD was beyond good ol' fashioned torture).

"I can be," she replies eventually. May is calm, one would even say courteous, but the steel in those dark, bottomless eyes makes it perfectly clear to Ward that she would like nothing more than to kill him with her bare hands.

That is, if she beats Philip Coulson to it. The man hasn't said a word since he came in, and he doesn't need to. His hostility is rolling off him in tidal waves.

The Director of SHIELD and "The Cavalry".

_Damn son, that's some serious SHIELD top brass._

Skye was – _is – _no simple foot soldier, and while Ward can understand that perhaps having a…an…_affair…_with the enemy probably caused a security panic that pissed off more than couple of her bosses, but Level 5 agent still does not warrant an entourage like this. That just _doesn't_ happen.

_Unless…unless -_

Wait.

Staring at the pair in front of him, Ward is awash with a strange sense of clarity, as if after weeks of being locked inside this cinderblock, someone suddenly lets in a stream of proper light.

Finally, something makes sense.

_ "If you only knew, Grant. If you only knew."_

"So that's it. That's what she meant."

He's been so good at avoiding thinking about where Skye had been during the time he spent in this cell. He had just about convinced himself that the medic team patched her up and sent her to her commanding officer to be yelled at and put on desk-duty until further notice.

The biochemist - Dr. Simmons - came to see him three days ago. How she managed to sneak around the bureaucracy, he doesn't know, but she stood there almost on the exact spot May is standing on now, just wringing her hands and staring at him with a pinched frown as he did his morning push-ups.

Whatever message she came to deliver, she never worked up the courage to say it. Nevertheless, he toyed with the idea for days after she'd gone that it was Skye who sent her ….

But it seems there is no point in playing pretend. Dr. Simmons had been the obituary he didn't want to read.

"No. Oh God, please no." Ward stumbles a couple of steps back. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!" His fist slams into the wall, and an explosion of orange web-lines burst from the point of impact, sending a jolt of electrical impulse up his arm, straight into his torso and down his legs. He crumbles to a heap on the floor, muscles twitching in awful spasms, still screaming, "Skye, not her. Please…"

Other the other side, Melinda grinds out, "That's not her name."

"_Tell me something true, Grant." Skye was curled against his side, her head cushioned against his chest, and her soft naked body providing a steady source of warmth in this drafty little cottage, forty-five kilometers west of Moscow. _

_His mind was idle, and he was perfectly content to relish the flood of endorphins and oxytocin overriding his system. _I love you, _he wanted to say, except the truth terrified him to the point where he couldn't talk about it, and he doubted that she would believe him even if he it. Instead, he drew the blanket around her bare shoulders and said, "You first." _

_"Alright." Skye propped herself onto her elbows. "My earliest memory is the view of the horizon from the cockpit of a plane. My mother," she stared down at her hands, "was a pilot."_

_"Is that why your name is Skye?" Grant inquired softly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear._

_She kissed him in reply – please, please don't ask any more – and lays back down. "Yes. Yes it is."_

Philip Coulson crouches down beside him and says with no room left in his tone for anything other than total complacency. He does, for a split second, remind Ward of John Garett.

"Tell us what happened to our daughter."


	2. Move Me To Stand

.

"To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand.  
>Therefore if thou moved, thou runn'st away.<p>

A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will  
>Take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's"<br>- _Gregory & Sampson _| _Act I Scene I, "Romeo & Juliet"_

* * *

><p>ll<p>

_ AUGUST 28, 2014_  
><em> 13:15 EST<em>  
><em> PLACE DES ARTS, MONTREAL<em>

ll

A conversation between them occurs in Montreal. This isn't the first time they've met after their initial encounter during the Triskelion incident. The impossible girl who lived now has a name – Skye – even if she still refuses to call him anything other than 'Hydra Puppet'.

They are sitting outside Place Des Arts watching the crowd attending the Montreal World Film Festival. She wears a red summer dress and drinks her overly priced Frappuccino.

"So what happened that day? Afterwards."

"After what?" She asks absently, eyes watching the crowd. It is a rare occasion; they are at the same location for separate reasons. He is here to kill someone, and she is here to kill someone else. Not that it matters. They've got an unspoken agreement established: be it friendly banter or flirty suggestions, nothing would change if they ever find themselves at the wrong end of each other's guns.

When they are on the clock, nothing can ever change.

Skye rescinds her scrutiny directed at a suspicious looking man who as it turns out is just trying to hide the joint in his suit pocket. "Oh you mean –"

"Yeah."

* * *

><p>ll<p>

_ APRIL 13, 2014 _  
><em> 09:43 EST<em>  
><em> SHIELD HEADQUARTER: THE (OLD) TRISKELION<em>  
><em> LOCATION: 38.8972° N, 77.0642° W<em>

ll

When Steve Roger's voice breaks through the intercom, everyone in the Triskelion stops to listen.

Sharon Carter will tell you that she has a gun pointed between Brock Rumlow's eyebrows before the Captain even finishes speaking.

Melinda May will tell you that the pencil pushers in Admin has just about shit themselves at the revelation. Jemma Simmons and Leo Fitz wish they could vouch more for their fellow scientists, but alas neither are very good liars.

Victoria Hand will tell you that as soon as the news reaches her, she sends her command base The Hub into total paralysis. By her orders, no Hydra agent is going to penetrate or escape from her walls.

Nick Fury – er, if he were to live, God rest his one-eyed soul – will tell you how putting a bullet through Alexander Pierce's face gives him every satisfaction and yet no satisfaction at all. Never in the near-seventy years since SHIELD was born had anything come this close to annihilating them. How could so many of them be so blind to the undercurrents flowing beneath their feet? His disappointment and fear are both equally justified.

_Project Insight has been compromised._

_HYRDA assassinated Director Fury._

_Alexander Pierce sold out everyone._

Maria Hill will tell you that the sight of the proto-type new-generation helicarriers rising into the sky, bearing the coordinates that will topple the free world as they know it (though how "free" it actually is still requires debate), renders her completely numb.

Clint Barton, well, he will tell you nothing at all, having been deep undercover in a remote region of South America during the whole attack. He emerges a week later to find his organization alive but in shambles, concerned and confused as hell. (Natasha is not impressed).

And Phil Coulson? Three thousand feet in the air over the arctic circle on a mission of his own, his mobile command unit is a bit late on the up-take too, but when the reports do reach The Bus, he will tell you how utterly proud he is to be part of SHIELD. Unofficially, he will also tell you how utterly proud he is of his little girl.

Project Insight is supposed to be a good thing, a way to counteract global terrorism at the bud, to prevent catastrophe before it happens. It isn't supposed to be the catastrophe itself.

But Hydra had bought out Alexander Pierce, and Pierce had bought out STRIKE team, and now everything is on fire.

The control chips that Captain America manages to switch into the operating center do not work. Even though the old chips (ones that Alexander had allowed Hydra to tamper with) are removed, they've already installed a virus into the system that prevents any further change of command.

Down on the ground, enemy strike units barricade the exits, waiting for the helicarrier's long range precision weapons to fire. One of the thousands of gun-heads is fixed on the building complex before them, which houses some SHIELD's most valuable human assets.

The plan has become increasingly transparent: grab the best and brightest and blow up the rest. Several elite Hydra extraction teams have been sent in with a shopping list, and the sale is for limited time only. When the clock strikes twelve, the whole place will be reduced to smithereens, ending approximately 7000 thousand lives, three times the population of the SS. Titanic.

It doesn't matter if the extraction isn't completely successful, because as the goes saying goes, 'if I can't have it, no one can'.

When Victoria Hand calls Phil Coulson into The Hub after the incident, she says with a wiry smile, "You've one hell of a kid, Coulson."

Skye, for the most part, remembers slamming her fingers into the keyboard at a speed which she had never done before. As a kid, she had never encountered a firewall she couldn't crack or virus she couldn't beat. Hell, she hacked into the Pentagon when she was fifteen and narrowly escaped juvie because of her parental and grandparental (thank you Nana May) connections.

Skye swears, as she pushes herself to work faster, that if she lives, she _needs _to meet the son of a bitch who designed this piece-of-genius. (She does eventually find out about Zola, but that's another story on its own).

"Skye! Hurry!" Maria's urgent beckoning tightens the knot in the girl's stomach, but her hands are already moving at the extreme limit of human capability.

"I'm trying!"

Ever since her graduation from Operations three years ago, Skye had been focusing her efforts in the field, benching her computer savviness in favour of more physical skills. Romanoff says she has a promising career, but Skye knows that at this point in time, she is still just a hammer, and not even a very tough one at that. If she ever wants to be a specialist, she will have to be more than just a blunt instrument. Today however, the skills required of her are not the ones she's been slaving over for months, but the ones that nearly costed her 25 years in a federal facility. Right now, SHIELD has no shortage of people excellent with a gun, but all their prowess would be moot if she can't get the control chips to work.

What's it matter who can shoot a gun, if they're going to be dead in less than two minutes.

An enemy agent breaks through the door just then, probably here to 'collect' Hill, but her bullets takes him down in one go. Over the gunfire and explosion, both inside and out, Skye hardly hears a thing. Not the guns, not Maria's urging, not her heartbeat, not even her own thoughts. It is fair to say she has reached a state of complete disassociation between her body and whatever it is that drives her forward. There is nothing except the furious tapping of her fingers on the keyboard, and the terrible countdown of the flashing red light.

1:00

"Skye!"

"Almost there!"

"WHAT?!" Static buzzes through Maria's earpiece and she spins around, just as an explosion blasts through the midriff of the third building. It hosts mostly non-tactical departments such administration, medical, research and development…

0:30

Even though they are in a completely separate wing, the shock wave rocks the foundation beneath their feet. The jolt hits Skye like a slap to the back of the head, and suddenly, the neural circuits which didn't connect finally sparks the light bulb in her prefrontal cortex.

0:15

"I got it! I got it!"

0:10

0:08

0:06

0:06

The new control chips come online, and the world lets out a large sigh of relief.

Skye jumps out of her chair, practically shoving Maria aside as she presses her face into the window. The north-eastern wing is enshrouded in smoke from the 46th floor up. The entirety of the top one third of the building is in flames.

Fire burns up…

_Simmons! Fitz!_

_Mom. _

"We have fifteen minutes before the helicarriers blow. Can you guarantee we're in the safe zone?" asks Maria, taking her by the arm and turning her away from the havoc. "Agent Skye."

"I'm a hacker, Deputy Director, not a physicist. If the helicarrier is going to drop, I can't predict where it will land."

As they speak, three SHIELD quinjets, having broken free from the barricade, shoot through the air. Behind them, the soldiers and agents now fueled by the adrenaline of their near-death experience and the new found confidence from the defeat of the helicarriers, follow suit. One after another, rows and rows of jets rise into the sky.

Maria presses a hand on her mic and commands, "Attention all SHIELD agents. This is Maria Hill. The Triskelion is compromised. We need to evacuate under T-15 minutes. Activate protocol alpha dash oh one hundred zee. I repeat activate protocol alpha dash oh one hundred zee."

"I'm going to the third wing!" says Skye as she straps on her vest and loads her handgun, but her godmother's iron grip seizes by the shoulder and forces her back down onto the chair.

"Your mother can get herself out, Agent Skye. I will not allow you –"

"Agent Hill, I'm afraid that's not up to you. You just activated protocol alpha – 0100Z. Under states of emergency evacuation, operative agents Level 3 through 4 are responsible for ensuring the safety of non-tactic staff. I'm Level 4."

But Maria can not be dissuaded, "Hydra is here to snatch our people, if your father – "

But Skye doesn't want to think about her father, or how if her mother or herself dies, he has a fiancée with whom he can still create a new family.

She likes Audrey, really she does, okay? Audrey is sweet, kind, and non-judgmental, and her dad has every reason to love her, but after New York, Skye thought for sure it was over. There was no way her dad can undo the damage of lying and pretending to be dead, but apparently Audrey is a saint, because now they're engaged.

What happened to her parents, it was such a long time ago. The end of _them…_her mother had started it, and her father had finished it. By now, she should be over the whole thing, but Skye has never been good at letting go.

Besides, she is not the first or only legacy to fall into the ranks. Triplet, Sharon, they're all descendants of senior agents, and no one would ever think to stop them from doing their job.

Yanking her arm from Maria's grasp, Skye speeds off without another word.

* * *

><p>ll<p>

_AUGUST 28, 2014_  
><em> 13:15 EST<em>  
><em> PLACE DES ARTS, MONTREAL<em>

ll

"Thanks."

Her frappacino is sucked down to mere ice bits, but Skye keeps jabbing at it with her straw. Ward thinks it's cute. She looks so harmless, sitting there in the sun with her casual sunglasses and painted toes. She can easily be mistaken for a student from the university just two blocks away, but she is so much more than that.

"For what?" He asks into his iced coffee.

"For telling me about Jemma and Leo. I found them and got out of the building before the helicarrier collided into it."

"Believe me I was just trying to save my own ass," he chuckles mirthlessly. "About Fitz –"

"_Agent_ Fitz," corrects Skye, the playful attitude she sported earlier fading quickly. Skye doesn't like talking about other people she works with, for security reasons, but also because the more she talks about her real friends, the more she is reminded that the person she is having coffee with is the enemy. He may not be the instigator of the Project Insight catastrophe, but he is part of the reason and therefore carries part of the blame.

* * *

><p>ll<p>

_ APRIL 13, 2014 _  
><em> 09:43 EST<em>  
><em> SHIELD HEADQUARTER: THE (OLD) TRISKELION<em>  
><em> LOCATION: 38.8972° N, 77.0642° W<em>

ll

Why Team 3 thinks it would be a good idea to extract assets in a burning building, Ward has no idea, but at this rate, not only is he not going to find Donnie Gills, he might not even make it out alive himself.

Who is the commander of Team 3 again? Oh right. Sitwell. That brainless fucker.

"Commander, sir, should we proceed with our orders? I mean it's getting kind of hot in here," One of his subordinates shouts over the wreckage.

"If you would like to be the one to tell Dr. Whitehall that we don't have Donnie Gills, then by all means go."

The man visibly pales at the reminder, and Ward turns around, levelling, "That's what I thought. The orders were clear for Gills. Either we bring him in, or we leave this place with his body. Now I personally have an objection to becoming barbeque, so if you wouldn't mind shutting that whiny mouth of yours and just do your job."

Speaking into his mic, Ward orders, "Alright, Team 2, this floor is wraps. Let's move on."

Sitwell's detonation ensures no one on levels 46 and above is getting out. That takes care of all of medical and half of administration (or at least those too injured or too slow to run when they had the chance), and enables Hydras to focus their man-power on those in research and development.

Donnie Gills is a newly graduate from the Academy, as green as the first sapling in the spring. Taking him out should be no problem, even if he is a gifted. Hydra has encountered its fair share of special people over the years, and Ward is no stranger to terminating those who refused to co-operate. It does become problematic however, when the bosses want 'live specimens'. Gifted ones are often volatile, and plans of containment will always sound easier on paper than in execution.

Whitehall said he wants Gills's body dead or alive, but that usually means alive. Ward may not exactly be the 'happy to comply' kind, but he's the 'happy to remain alive' kind. No one messes with Whitehall, and Garrett's favouritism only protects him so far.

Leading his team into the lobby of the 43rd floor, Ward scans his surroundings. This level, like the one above it, is entirely comprised of laboratories and expensive research equipments. Due to its close proximity to the blast radius, its structural integrity has been badly compromised. If Donnie is here, he is most likely dead.

"Divide up. Let's do a quick sweep. Report back at the exit in five. Go."

The six men under his command nod and take off in teams of two, leaving him alone. Any staff still able enough to move has long abandoned this floor, and those left behind are too dead to be of any value. Rounding the corner, Ward adjusts his mask and purposely avoids the impaled lab tech as he ventures further down the smoky corridor. The fire here isn't as bad as it had been on higher floors, but it gets worse in rooms straight ahead.

Bending down, he wipes the ashes from a sign that has fallen from the ceiling.

Molecular Biochemistry. Not likely where Donnie Gills is going to be. The boy is a specialist in engineering and chemphyschem.

Ward is in the process of considering turning around when he suddenly hears voices coming from within one of the labs to his left.

Shuffling closer to the entrance, he backs himself against the wall and listens. The smoke is making it harder to breath, so he'll have to do this quick.

"Dr. Simmons, we have to go! The fire is getting stronger. You'll die in here!"

"I can't just leave him! He's my best friend, and it's all my fault…"

There is a collection of grunts and metals scrapping the floor before the woman speaks again, this time more out of breath than earlier. Jesus, the smoke is bad in here. Whatever they kept in this place, it got ignited by the bomb blast.

"Donnie, forget about me. You heard Agent Hill. We have to evacuate. Soak yourself with the emergency shower by the lab entrance and go." The older agents coughs out, forcing some degree of resolve and command into her voice.

_Gotcha Donnie._

Ward crouches down, slowly creeping into the lab, taking cover behind a row of lab benches where he has a clear and constant visual of the target.

Donnie Gills hesitates around his superior officer, attempting to pull her away but with no success. The smoke is becoming nearly unbearable, and the boy's resilience finally caves. As he stands to escape, Ward takes his chance.

Two ICER rounds strike Donnie on his neck and temple. The kid stares at him, shocked, until his eyes roll back and he drops to the floor like a sack of potatoes. From the looks of it, he probably weighs about as much, which makes transporting him out of here significantly less burdensome for Ward and his team.

The woman lets out a shocked yell, whipping around in time to see the webs of violet-blue dendrotoxin sprawling over Donnie's pale skin, ghosting past his hairline, and seeping into his veins.

_"_Oh no, Donnie…" She reaches for the boy, but Ward would be damned to let a seasoned biochemist near a 'special' he just tranquilized.

"Don't touch him. Hands up where I can see them."

With a gun pointed at her head (a real one this time), she has very little choice but to obey.

The nametag clipped to her lab-coat reveals her identity: _JEMMA SIMMONS, PhD. BIOCHEMISTRY._

Her name is on the list too. Not his list though. Sitwell's. Ward's targets consist mainly of those in engineering and tech. Counting Donnie Gills, he's crossed off or collected all of them except for one more. Leopold Fitz, Donnie Gill's SO, is not a gifted like the boy, but nevertheless has an incredible mind. And if Ward were to hazard a guess, he'd say the guy he's looking for is the unfortunate lying beneath this broken storage shelf.

Simmons kneels between him and the engineer, apparently keen to protect her colleague. Her hands shake as she laces them behind her head, but she refuses to look away from the barrel of his gun. She doesn't speak, but her stiff spine and the air she carries make a literal definition of the phrase 'over my dead body.'

"Move aside."

She does not. Admirable, her courage, if it isn't about to get her killed.

"Don't be stupid."

Again, nothing. In fact, Simmons seems to have stopped breathing altogether. Ward doesn't understand how someone can look fierce and fearless with tears streaming down her face. He also doesn't understand what must be going through her head. _You jump, I jump? He die, I die? _Nothing good ever comes out of trying to be a martyr. Or a sentimentalist, for that matter…

"I gave you a chance," he warns, finger pressing the trigger. "You SHIELD people just can't take a hint."

_BOOM!_

A loud commotion jostles him. Mistakenly, he turns his head towards the sound, and the scientist takes this as meaning he is no longer paying attention and tries to grab the gun from him. However, since she has neither the necessary skills nor stealth, up against someone like Ward, who even when temporarily distracted is still in tune with his environment, she is completely out of her depth. From his periphery vision, he catches her miniscule change in posture and deduces her objective in less than a quarter of the time it takes for her to rise to her full height.

One hard pistol-whip sends her crashing back down, and she stays there, curled up and petrified by equal parts shock and pain.

_BANG!_

Looks like his subordinates are having some difficulties of their own. Slinging Donnie over his shoulder, Ward glances towards the trapped man under the wreckage.

Fitz's left ulna is protruding from his skin and his legs look positively mangled. That doesn't mean he's necessarily dead – Ward has seen men suffer much worse and live, fascinating how much the human body can endure – but transportation is going to be a hassle especially if they want a quick retreat.

In conclusion: not worth it.

Switching up his handgun for his rifle, Ward makes for the exit.

Up ahead in the elevator lobby, three of his team members are losing to one SHIELD agent, a woman.

"Sir – "A fourth man comes towards him. "Is that –"

"Yes. Take Gills and go down the exit to your left, there should be an extraction team waiting at the designated site."

Ward waits until the remainder of his team and Gills disappear into the staircase before asserting himself into the fight. By then, two of the three agents are already on the floor. Dead.

Lifting his rifle into position, Ward fires his first shot at the back of her head. He doesn't miss, but neither does he hit true. The bullet penetrates through her elastic band, and a plume of chestnut brown locks explodes in the wake of its path.

He should've known then there is going to be nothing but murky waters and blurry lines between the two of them.

She turns, barely looking as she shoots his last subordinate in the groin (purposely, he assumes, no matter how she denies it). Her hair whips freely with the momentum of her torso, and it would have been quite an artistic sight if they weren't trying their very hardest to shoot each other dead.

Neither succeeds. Naturally.

Ward will look back on that day and admit with some perplexity and chagrin that he underperformed. Somewhere along the way of him trying to kill her, he lost his rifle and ended up on his back, staring death in the eye. And what lovely earthy brown eyes, death has.

"If you do that," He interjects just as Skye's finger tightens around the trigger. "Who's going to save those scientists trapped back there?"

"That's a bluff," she pants out, digging the heel of her boot harder into his stomach. She's looking worse for wear, but Ward knows he can't have looked much better.

"Is it? Fine. Call it. Dr. Simmons and Dr. Fitz's lives are on you."

The girl flinches. Ah, so the names mean something to her! Her nostrils flare as she inhales sharply, and her entire countenance is briefly overwhelmed by something more prominent than her desire to end him.

Yet, Ward's carefully timed jib has already shifted the game in his favour. Her hands are no longer as steady, and that wink of hesitation is all he needs to swipe her off her feet. His muscle memory and survival instincts kick in full force at the slightest chance of gaining the upper-hand.

But the girl is agile, determined and unrelenting. Flipping onto her feet, she dodges left, evading the blow aimed to incapacitate her. As his fist skims past her right ear, she twists, locking his forearm between her shoulder and the curve of her elbow. She would've broken his arm, but he retaliates first by jamming into the juncture of her neck, and her whole body goes limp at the impact.

Before she can recover, Ward reaches around and pulls her into a choke hold. Up close, she is a small thing, a meager 5'6 compared to his towering 6'3. She doesn't weight that must either, and as he tightens his grip, he can feel the tip of her boots scrapping urgently against the ground.

He had come so close to killing her then.

Slowly, he watches her young face darken from red to purple, feels the fight leave her limbs, and thinks it'll be over soon….

Until a sharp, drilling sensation shoots up his side.

Growling in pain, Ward drops her immediately, and she rolls away gasping. By the time he yanks the small dagger from between his 8th and 9th rib (a centimeter deeper and it would've punctured his lung), she has recovered her gun and is firing back at him with renewed wrath.

Colliding into the wall, Ward suddenly remembers the experimental weapon strapped to the side compartment of his trousers. Hydra scientists call it 'the obelisquen', which is a smooth round disk adapted from the traditional Japanese shuriken and infused with the alien properties extracted from a recent 'acquisition'. Field agents have yet to test in real combat, but they are told to be diligent with it.

Ward has seen with his own eyes the test subjects turn into ashes in a matter of seconds. Once struck, death is assured.

Bullets rains down on him mercilessly, and goddamn if this agent isn't a crack shot. Had he been a lesser agent himself, he would be dead five times over. Diving across the hall, he rolls swiftly behind a heavy-duty refrigerator. Its thick metal door packed with layers of frozen petri dishes provide a temporary refuge for him to gather his wits and come up with a plan.

Suddenly the onslaught stops, and counting quickly in his head, Ward realizes it's because his opponent only has 3 rounds left in her gun. Peeking out from behind his hiding place, he can see between the gaps of her boots his trifle lying too many feet away to be of any immediate help. The obelisquen is starting to feel really useful as his options wind down.

From the corner of his eyes, he spots a bag of white grainy material on the floor.

_Agarose (Protein Electrophoresis Grade), Crystalline Powder – _the bag reads. There is a substantial amount, at least a kilo worth of the stuff. Guess even SHIELD buys in bulk.

_And thank god for that, _thinks Ward.

Drawing out the obelisquen from its special pocket, Ward takes a deep breath, gauging his throw based on the sound of her footfalls, and tosses the open package through the air. The agarose will impair visuals for both of them, but it hardly matters on his end. The obelisquen doesn't have to hit any place in particular; it just has to hit. As the disk leaves his hand, he briefly wonders if it will hurt, dying from something like this. The test subjects did scream, but Ward always got the impression it was more out of sheer terror from seeing yourself turn into dust and being powerless to stop it than anything else.

What a shame, part of his subconscious muses. She is so young.

He sits there, leaning against the cold petri-dishes, and listens to her strangled cry. There is a muffled _thump _as her body collapse, and her gun clatters loudly against the linoleum floor. Even as the back of his mind is telling him that something is not right, he is already on the move, wading through the translucent fog towards her remains. Drawing closer, he discover in astonishment that what should've been a pile of ashes is still very much human.

Dear god, she is alive – defiantly, stubbornly, _impossibly _alive – and Ward doesn't know what to make of that. In this line of work, there are always surprises; no operation every pans out like the initial plan, and he is the best of the best of them when it comes to adapting to the field. Except, he doesn't expect this, _her, _the impossible, and he is struck dumb for the first time since Garrett fished him out of juvie and then left him abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

The girl lies in the debris and wreckage of their fight, writhing desperately as he approaches. Her right cheek is torn open and she's gargling a mouthful of blood, barely managing to sort through short panting breaths.

There is no good reason for which Ward decides to spare her life, other than perhaps to see her again. In another fight. Another place. Another miracle. He wants to unravel her, to unravel _this, _whatever it is, whatever _she_ is, and he is willing to wait. To lurk is to know patience well, and if indeed it is a virtue, then it is one of the only ones he has.

Had he known that in doing so, he is about to embark on the path to the end, he may have turned around, picked up the gun, and emptied it into her. Oh, but he had no idea, so he walks, stepping over her body and doesn't look back.

All around, particles of agarose, beautifully luminescent under the flickering white light, snows down like the beginning of a long nuclear winter.

* * *

><p>ll<p>

_ AUGUST 28, 2014_  
><em> 13:15 EST<em>  
><em> PLACE DES ARTS, MONTREAL <em>

ll

"He was on the list too, you know. Agent Fitz. My list."

"Yeah, I know. Simmons told me." Skye wants to ask after Donnie, how he is, where they had sent him, if he is still alive… if he is still Donnie. But she holds her tongue and says nothing.

Regardless, Ward is astute enough to read into her silence. "Donnie's alright."

It might've been a lie (in fact it probably is), because in actuality he hasn't seen Gills since he handed him over to his superiors after the abduction, and so can't possibly know how the boy is faring.

If Skye finds his reassurance suspicious, she makes no indication of it.

Gingerly, she touches her face, her mind drifting into that terrible memory again. She remembers freezing on the spot as the cloud of irritant flew towards her, and through the white haze, she had heard a faint swoosh, indicative of a spinning projectile, before pain had bloomed across her face.

SHIELD had done their best work on her, but her right cheek scarred. Permanently. Not exactly a physical trait advantageous for field jobs, especially since she'd been promoted to Level 5 and deemed suitable for undercover operations.

_No matter_, Jemma had assured her firmly, _there is nothing a layer of biomimetic film and some makeup can't solve._

Simmons is overcompensating, for obvious reasons. SHIELD had tried to work their magic on Leo too, and well…

"Fitz has Simmons. So he'll be alright too," Skye responds eventually, and when she does, she realizes that despite her efforts, she still revealed far too much.

"What about you?" His question catches her off guard. Like in the many ways she befuddles him, Grant Ward also represents the various ambiguities Skye fails to understand about the world she inhabits.

"What do you mean?"

Other than Garrett, Ward hardly knows what it's to have people give a damn about him the way Skye does for her friends, and so he cannot imagine what it'll be like to lose someone in that way. Before Skye, he had never really cared. Now, he is curious.

"I mean," Ward clarifies. "Will_ you_ be alright?"

They are her friends, Fitz and Simmons, and the kind of bond they share is not something encouraged or can even be nurtured amongst the ranks in Hydra. For Ward, loyalties are not professed to your teammates but to the "common cause" they stand for. So it's not difficult to imagine why faiths waver eventually, when the item of your devotion never speak back.

"Oh. I…no," Skye replies, without malice. She pauses prematurely, as if surprised by her own answer. "Considering I'm having coffee with you, I'd say I am so far from alright."

It's the last thing she says to him before they each head off to fight their targets, and her words burn him in some place he can only feel late at night when he is left alone with his thoughts.

After that day, Ward makes a habit of inquiring after Donnie Gills, though he never tells Skye anything about it. It finally becomes clear to him, as it had occurred to her that afternoon in Montreal, just how far from the reservation he has gone, and how far he too is from being alright.


End file.
